‘Hear you all had a fine time at the cottage, Brother Staybridge.’

‘Oh yes. Very agreeable. Your son — uh, Howard, uh — is an excellent swimmer. Really! So sorry we didn’t have room to invite Mrs. Cornplow and yourself.’

‘Oh, we had our vacation . . . I suppose you might say. And what can I do for you?’

Staybridge looked as though he thought Fred was being rude. Fred was sorry, but he felt rude; in the damp cold air that Staybridge perpetually exuded, he always felt rude. But the gentlemanly assassin of Duplexes was saying graciously:

‘No doubt you will have noted the advertisements of the Allover Caravans — the Conqueror company.’

‘Good ads! Fine!’

‘Kind of you to say so. It just happens that I have some small interest in the Conqueror company.’

‘Ur.’

‘And I have thought of suggesting to them that they come to some agreement with you, possibly even joint advertising. Since your Duplex is a trailer, and the Allover not, they need not exactly be in competition, and I was thinking that if we — or rather, I should say, they — combined, you might in a way dominate the field together — freeze out the others, I believe it is called.’

‘Yes. It’s called that. It’s also called stifling competition, and ganging up on the other racketeers.’

‘Oh? What I was really thinking was that since the Duplex is not made by the Triumph company, you might conceivably try to arrange with the makers to dispose of it to us. Particularly since I understand from your son — uh, from Howard — that you are giving some thought to retiring in four or five years.’

Staybridge’s persistent objection to remembering Howard’s name would have been enough to irritate Fred handsomely; it wanted only the pinch-nosed patronage with which Staybridge was going on:

‘Of course I don’t know what you plan to do, if you retire. I shouldn’t have thought you were cursed with hobbies, as I am. But no doubt you’ll find something with which to busy yourself, more or less. But the point is, if you feel like retiring, just possibly you might not care to face the rather sharp opposition that, I’m afraid, the Conqueror company, with its large resources, is planning to give you. I’m sure you’d be wise to take it easy.’

This to Fred Cornplow, who had never in his life evaded a fight — except with Sara. He exploded up from his chair, but he managed to be fairly calm as he croaked:

‘Me? Retire? Where d’you suppose Howard (that’s my son) ever got such a foolish idea? Not me! I like a scrap too well. But thanks for the tip. Morning!’

Opposite the large Conqueror agency, Fred hired a vacant lot, and within three days he had installed there a Duplex Trailer display in open air. He had one side ripped off a Duplex, so that its hidden domesticities were revealed. He engaged two men and two young women of a stranded night-club troupe, with a couple of children, and this theatrical family was displayed living the life of Riley in the trailer. They prepared and smackingly devoured large meals; on the roof they drank tea and afterward danced to a radio; they modestly retired, in the several chambers provided when the roof was hoisted; and all one night they remained abed in the Duplex, before a tremendous crowd which stayed up till two a.m. to behold human beings engaged in so very odd a practice as sleeping.